The invention relates to the treatment of water, and the automatic injection of chemicals and additives to the purified water, and the printing, food processing, and plating industries, and the mixing of saline solutions with purified and sterilized water for medical purposes such as kidney dialysis.
The printing industry uses semi-purified water mixed with chemicals in the printing process. In addition to the chemicals, alcohol is added to the mixture to produce the desired print quality. Through the use of ultra-pure water in conjunction with chemicals, the use of alcohol could be reduced or eliminated. Ultra-pure water improves the printing quality, and reduces the amount of ink used in the printing process.
Similarly, ultra-pure water is needed and used in connection with the plating or layering of materials used in the production of semi-conductor technology and ultra-pure water is also used in medical applications, for example, kidney dialysis. Previous attempts to produce ultra-pure water have resulted in waters that have a purity of five to ten megohm-cm.sup.3. While this have proven to be acceptable for most applications, it is desirable to develop ultra-pure water and methods for producing ultra-pure water, having a purity of greater than ten megohm-cm.sup.3.
A water purification process producing five to ten megohm-cm.sup.3 quality water and with chemical injection system has been fabricated using individual commercially available water purification units. The longevity of inline service of some of the critical parts was previously limited, requiring replacement at high cost. Thus, it was desirable to design a unit with a long service life. The deionizer or ion exchange portion of the purification system was one area requiring changes and a first improvement was made in upgrading the efficiency of the deionizing vessel in improving the separation and stack ability of the vessel sections to accommodate the use of different resins in various separate combinations within one vessel, and without danger of mixing different types of resin materials during process contaminations.